OF FALLOWING. 



beans are drilled, and that a ploughing ought likewise to 

 be given to the fields which carried turnips. Except for 

 beans or barley, there is no necessity, they admit, for plough- 

 ing in the spring months ; in regard to oats, which are so 

 frequently sown after grass, a second ploughing is never 

 thought of. 



SECT. IV. On Fallowing. 



SUMMER fallowing of land, or the practice of working it 

 during the summer months, has undoubtedly been the chief 

 source of improvement in the clay soils of Scotland ; for the 

 ground in cultivation, having been kept in constant tillage 

 for ages, was infested with weeds of various descriptions, 

 which by no other means could have been kept down or era- 

 dicated. In dry soils, since the introduction of the turnip 

 husbandry, fallowing is no longer necessary;* though in 



* Mr Brown of Cononsyth in Angus, however, contends for fallows 

 even on dry soils. He states, in a communication to the author, that 

 one-seventh of the dry land of his farm is in fallow or turnips, but in ge- 

 neral he only sows about ten acres of it in turnips, as he finds that he 

 has much better grass, when sown among wheat after fallow, than with 

 oats after turnips ; and when broke up from ley, the difference of th& 

 oat crop, in favour of bare fallow, is also discernible. A crop of wheat, 

 he maintains, is obtained at less expence than turnips and oats, and on 

 an average of years, is as valuable ; the manure produced by wheat straw, 

 may not be so rich as when many turnips are raised, but a greater quan- 

 tity is procured, and if driven out into a large dunghill in the winter 

 months, will answer perfectly well for fallows. Probably sheep are not 

 much fed with turnips in that neighbourhood, for it is the basis of good 

 husbandry, on light soils, to have turnips eaten with sheep, to tread 



